—Julia Torres, PhD Student, University of Canterbury and Elizabeth Macpherson, Senior Lecturer, University of Canterbury School of Law

Colombian cyclist Egan Arley Bernal Gómez, this year’s winner of the Tour de France, has captured the world’s attention as the first Latin American to don its leading yellow jersey. What readers may not know is that Colombia also wears the yellow jersey in the race for protection of Mother Earth, blazing the trail for the rights of nature. In response to weak environmental regulation and lack of decisive government action on climate change, biodiversity loss, and environmental degradation, Colombia is arguably the most judicially and politically active nation in granting legal personhood and rights of nature.

In 2018, the Supreme Court of Colombia recognised the Amazon ecosystem, including its river and forest territory, to be a legal subject, and compelled the Colombian government to take action to control deforestation, associated climate change and water cycle impacts in the Amazon region. Despite being ‘the lung of the Earth’, deforestation of the Colombian Amazon has increased by 44% in the last 3 years alone. The Amazon case was brought by a group of children and young people ranging from 7 to 25 years of age who successfully claimed as representatives of future generations the violation of their constitutionally protected human rights to life, water and a healthy environment, caused by the government’s inaction.

Key to its analysis, the Court interpreted the constitutional principle of solidarity between citizens to mean that Colombians must show solidarity not just towards their fellow Colombian people, but towards people living in other countries and unborn future generations affected by climate change, and even towards plant and animal species. We are all, after all, members of Earth’s community and we all have a stake in the survival of the planet.

These are not the only judicial decisions to come out of Colombia on the rights of nature. The La Plata River,Cauca River and the Páramo de Pisba high-altitude ecosystem have all been recognised as legal subjects in the past two years. There have also been a string of cases that recognise animals to be legal persons in Colombia, and grant them the writ of habeas corpus to free them from unlawful detention within zoos, including a spectacled bear call ‘Chucho’. Chucho and his sister were born on the small Colombian reserve of Río Blanco and lived there happily in semi-captivity. That was until the female bear died unexpectedly and Chucho underwent a sudden change of behaviour leading to his escape from the reserve and his ultimate transfer to a zoo in the city of Barranquilla. In 2017 a group of animal rights petitioners appealed to the Constitutional Court of Colombia for Chucho’s release, relying on Colombian Law 1774 (2016), which declares that animals are sentient beings and not objects of property. The Court ruled in favour of the animal and its rights, emphasising the bio-centric interrelationship between humans and nature, granting Chucho the protection of habeas corpus, upholding his human right of freedom, and allowing him to return to the reserve at Rio Blanco.

Many readers will know that this year’s Tour de France was controversially suspended due to a landslide, allowing the Colombian contender to use his experience climbing Colombian mountains to take the lead. The Colombian rights for nature cases are also causing landslides in Colombia’s legal system. In recent days, the regional administrative government of the Department of Nariño recognised the legal personality and rights of the strategic ecosystems of Nariño, providing for their protection, conservation, restoration and advocacy in an administrative bylaw or State Executive Decree. This Decree recognises the intrinsic value and urgent need to protect strategic ecosystems and the key role of Indigenous, Afro-Colombians and peasant communities to enable socio-ecological change. The Decree confirms the role of the Nariño Government as guarantor of and advocate for the well-being of nature, requiring the rights of nature to be considered in government decision-making. To provide some clarity around policy implementation, the Decree orders the preparation of a Strategy for Respect, Protection and Guarantee of the Rights of Nature in the Department of Nariño. Those charged with drafting the Strategy include non-governmental environmental advocacy groups, representatives of Indigenous, Afro-Colombian and peasant communities, universities, and government agencies dealing with climate change, women and LGBTI rights. Importantly, the Nariño Decree sets a new precedent: it demands the cooperation of governments to work beyond their jurisdictions to ensure the protection of ecosystems.

Still, it seems that the yellow jersey will remain firmly strapped to Colombia’s back as its courts and government authorities continue to champion an Earth-centred approach to natural resource management. The strength of the Colombian approach to the rights of nature is due to a number of factors, including that:

The Colombian courts reach their findings based on an in-depth collective analysis of international, comparative domestic and national law and legal doctrine at multiple scales, together with leading scientific, social science and philosophical research literature.

Colombia has a strong constitutional framework for environmental and indigenous rights, and also applies principles of solidarity, intergenerational equity, and social welfare based on the rule of law.

In the face of governmental failure to enforce national environmental obligations, Colombian authorities are increasingly emphasising a need for collaboration between and beyond governments and communities to protect the rights of nature.

The groups that are arguably most affected by environmental damage in the long term (namely Indigenous peoples and future generations) are gaining an ever-stronger voice in Colombian rights of nature institutions, increasing the likelihood of transformative change.

It is a time of fiesta in Colombia, a time to celebrate world leadership in cycling and, it seems, global environmental governance.

Nonetheless, Colombian history tells us that justice is vulnerable to political, social and economic instability, and the Colombian authorities may well decide in the future that the protection of nature is not a priority.

Perhaps a greater danger in the Latin American context is that ground-breaking documents and discourses are often poorly implemented and enforced. Meanwhile, we the members of the Earth’s community, as both spectators and stakeholders, should stay glued to the tube.

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